Posted on 05/17/2019 10:38:47 AM PDT by Morgana
February 14, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – With abortion advocates currently on the defensive over multiple state proposals shining a national spotlight on late-term abortions, the left-wing HuffPost has taken the dramatic step of publishing an editorial by a mother wishing she had aborted her baby to avoid having to watch the child die from a severe abnormality.
Dina Zirlott, a 31-year-old Alabama mother of three girls, opens the article by revealing she was raped at age 17 and had a resulting daughter a year later, who died a year after that. After discussing her rape and the ensuing mental trauma, she says that almost eight months later her mother took her for a medical exam that revealed she was pregnant.
“The doctor came to us and spread the ultrasound pictures across the table. She pointed to darkness where gray brain matter ought to be,” Zirlott recalls. “She called it hydranencephaly, a congenital defect in which the brain fails to develop either cerebral hemisphere, instead filling with cerebrospinal fluid. The fetus continued to experience development because the brain stem was still intact, but she would be born blind, deaf, completely cognitively stunted, prone to seizures, diabetes insipidus, insomnia, hypothermia and more."
The doctor flatly told her “this condition is not compatible with life,” but she couldn’t get an abortion because Alabama law only permitted abortions up to around 24-26 weeks. Zirlott doesn’t elaborate on whether she attempted to arrange an abortion in another state, beyond claiming she “would still be obstructed by time, paperwork, politics and money.”
“I had already suffered one trauma. Was that not enough?” she asks. After quitting school halfway through her senior year, Zoe Lily was born on October 27, 2005. Zirlott describes a doctor explaining it “would be a kindness...to make her comfortable and let her go in peace,” but her family instead took Zoe home.
Over the next year, she writes, they cared for her through near-constant challenges until she died, from difficulty feeding her and frequent seizures to her inability to metabolize sleep hormones or regulate her own temperature.
“I grieve the person I might have become if had [sic] not been a young victim, a young mother, forced into unimaginable circumstance, seeded by compounding traumas. Did that girl not also deserve mercy? Was her life any less important?” she writes. “If I had been allowed the option to choose a ‘late-term abortion,’ would I? Yes. A hundred times over, yes."
Zirlott argues that Zoe would have been spared “so much pain” if her heart had been “stopped when she was warm and safe inside me,” adding that “perhaps I could have been spared as well.”
“Look at that photo of me and my daughter and tell me you know better than I do,” she challenges. “We should not have to beg for permission to decide what is best for ourselves and our children, even the ones who may never be born ― and maybe never should be born.”
The piece follows another HuffPost essay by a couple who had their baby aborted in the third trimester after a spina bifida diagnosis, against which many pro-lifers have pushed back:
“As difficult it is to digest Dina's story, not all cases of babies diagnosed with terminal illnesses in the womb end the same,” the Daily Wire’s Paul Bois responded. “Some, such as the case of Stephanie and Andy Schoonover, transform the parents in profound ways, allowing them to see life with a new perspective. For others, such as Melanie and Damion Sheenan, the baby defies diagnosis and lives on to become healthy.”
Dr. William Lile, a board-certified OB/GYN and pro-life public speaker, recently argued that when a baby faces a lethal abnormality, the humane response is not abortion but giving him or her the same "love, the concern, and the care" any born patient would receive. “This is a key concept: the baby in the womb is a patient,” he writes.
“1. Even if this story is true....
2. and even if that truth also implied moral permission to abort...
3. Then this anecdote would still represent only 0.000000001 percent of conception/birth/abortion cases.”
For every one of these heart-breaking cases (and, make no mistake, that is what this is), there are 100 or 1,000 cases of someone who just couldn’t be bothered to take a pill, or make sure that their partner put on a rubber, and they aborted out of sheer convenience. That is clearly morally reprehensible on the mother’s part.
I also think that people commenting about the woman who was the object of this thread should take a step back and think on it a little bit...mainly because she actually decided to, and DID, bring her baby to term, rather than abort her as her doctor clearly was inferring that she should. IOW, she did the right thing...and now, in these (thankfully) very rare circumstances, she has had second thoughts because of the trauma that she went through, and what her daughter went through. Given how rare this set of circumstances is (most babies with this condition are spontaneously aborted or stillborn), I’d say that it is rather presumptuous of anyone who hasn’t gone through anything similar to judge her. Let’s leave that for God, shall we?
Rick looked up from his paperwork, "Well everybody in Casablanca has problems. Yours may work out."
I’m really not seeing how a state law in Alabama is going to “kill Trump”.
“This stuff will KILL Trump with women, cancelling out the economy in many cases. Just as so many celebrated the retard Roy Moore getting the nomination, many are defending this stupidly crafted law. It is a mistake.”
If the Dems nominate an old white guy, then a lot of women and blacks will have no particular reason to go to the polls. Put this abortion thing - and, particularly, heart-breaking cases like this in the forefront - and, YES, it becomes a loser issue.
Politics and morality are NOT the same thing - but people have to understand that if we lose on the political side of the equation, then the moral die will have been cast. We’ll see a quick reversal of the great work being done to the Judiciary, more laws protecting/encouraging trans-whatevers, more laws & regulations treating religously correct statements as “hate speech,” etc., etc. Real, serious, morality requires that one be practical, that one uses the brain that God gave us to accomplish His goals, even if we have to sometimes do that with 2 steps forward, one backwards, two sideways, etc. We do NOT live in a perfect world, not by a long shot, and good morality on a societal level requires that the right people (or at least not the wrong people) lead society in the right direction.
Actually, the legislator and Gov. said they only did it for NATIONAL impact...so it would be blocked and get to the SCOTUS, and Roe v. Wade deleted.
“I’m really not seeing how a state law in Alabama is going to “kill Trump”.”
Don’t get me wrong - I think that Alabama should be permitted to pass a law like this, that Roe v. Wade is HORRIBLE law (not even so much for its results, as for the twisted and made-up-from-whole-cloth legal reasoning that was used to justify this decision) and should be overturned. But exactly NONE of that speaks to what the effect that this law will have upon the election next year.
The people that are outraged by this would never vote for Trump (or any Republican) anyway.
I look at abortionists and their enablers, and think “we have seen this before”. I’m glad the National Socialist propaganda posters are available on the ‘net. They serve as a reminder that the satanic culture of death never sleeps, never quits, never goes away. We must always be on guard against it.
I don’t know what the true statistic are on babies with severe birth defects but I know the # on women who use abortion as a contraceptive must be much higher. They use the extreme to support their agenda.
“The people that are outraged by this would never vote for Trump (or any Republican) anyway.”
But why on Earth do you want to give them a reason to vote?
Look, maybe this young women may realize in time that being raped and having a fatally ill child shaped her life for the better despite the horrendous circumstances and sorrow.
What I want to say to all of you here is that unless YOU have been raped and impregnated YOU have no idea what extraordinary Grace it would take to carry the seed of violence and shame.
Unless YOU have been raped and impregnated YOU have no idea of the torment you also carry, the inescapable reminder that you were violated. I tell you it is more than enough to drive a normal person insane.
Unless YOU have borne a child who is sure to die you have no idea what you can think. That thinking an earlier death might seem the more compassionate thing. Unless YOU have buried a dead child you have no idea what you’re capable of thinking or feeling.
God’s Grace is all that would get you through. Don’t you dare sit there and judge the feelings of this woman - no matter what website she’s written for.
Sometimes you people here make me so ashamed from your utter lack of compassion.
Think again before you open your big mouths. YOU have NO idea. I promise you that.
“This stuff will KILL Trump with women, cancelling out the economy in many cases. Just as so many celebrated the retard Roy Moore getting the nomination, many are defending this stupidly crafted law. It is a mistake.”
Your thoughts on abortion and Roy Moore are very revealing.
If OUR side does not stand up against abortion and the fascist LGBT agenda, then it SHOULD FAIL.
The economy SHOULD fail if we do not stand up for the lives of the innocent.
This issue may require CW2 to settle. I personally don’t want anyone on our side to only care about the economy. If so, they should form some other group or accept their fate in a nation run by Socialists.
I don’t care. I’d rather die fighting Socialists than locking arms with fiscal conservatives who will gladly enable the continuation of abortion and the homosexual / LGBT agenda.
Alabama and Georgia are NOT being extreme. We have extremists on the left openly celebrating abortion up until birth. That’s the extreme position, and civilized Americans are appalled. We must not go along to get along. We must fight.
None of this quisling “peace in our time” philosophy.
I’d prefer to focus on ways to prevent rape than find ways to accommodate it. Many Republicans in the past have supported exceptions for “rape and incest” and “life of the mother” (which is usually not even considered an abortion).
Often language is introduced as a poison pill to basically cause such laws to have no effect. Incest usually implies rape. If it was consensual incest (i.e. between adults) why would that be an exemption? But is rape going to be based on simply the mother-to-be affirming she was raped? Does there have to be a police report filed? Does this just become some technicality that provides an easy way to circumvent the law?
Imagine a woman who has consensual sex, gets pregnant, but wants an abortion. She could, even under the strictest letter of the law, go file a police report in which she makes the claim that she had non-consensual sex (aka been raped) while passed out from getting drunk but only discovered this later or only decided to report it because she found out she got pregnant from it.
I don’t believe her.
There’s a lot of questions about her story......for one thing why was she 8 months along before she went to the doctor? especially after a supposed rape....I would think you’d know your period stopped and would see a physician long before that. Was she involved sexually after that time? Was the rapist ever tested as the father or caught.
Huffington Post is well known to ‘find’ a story and build their own narrative around it....I just see lots of isssues with her story
one billionth of one percent?
Friend, all of us would benefit if you would take your own advice.
Friend, all of us would benefit if you would take your own advice.
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